


Turning a chainsaw into a knife

by orphan_account



Category: Christian Bible (New Testament), Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: 1 Corinthians 13:2, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-24 04:20:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30066558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: On 31st December, TOI suggested their mad plan to me.I vetoed - immediately.That alone does probably say a lot about my sanity.I didn't think: 'I'm insane'. Nor: 'I can't do it'. Nor: 'How will I ever get to the States'. Nor: 'What with Covid'. Nor: 'How am I going to manage physically.' Nor: 'How I am going to pay for this?'I vetoed, saying: 'No way I'm doing this procedure to him, not that rough, not that exhausting. That man has history. I, we'd be traumatizing him. You have been displaying the subtlety of a chainsaw.'They smiled.'That's correct. That is why you are going to turn yourself into a knife. A knife so sharp making a cut so smooth and perfect as to be imperceptible, painless, over in the blink of an eye, leaving no scars.'This is part of the story of how I became a knife.
Relationships: Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald & co





	Turning a chainsaw into a knife

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this on 19th January in one sitting.  
> I didn't change anything about it, apart from correcting grammar mistakes and typo's the next day.  
> It's about time you got to read it.

Today I will cry for the way the universe is built, for how it forces me away from those I love to give more room to love. I will cry before God, when faced with God, because I feel injustice in what He’s doing, in how He’s treating me – injustice because it doesn’t follow what I want, what I think I need – while probably, and yes, ineffably, giving me all I need. In some long term. Today I hate long terms, because humans are not made for long terms – they are made for the here and the now.  
And then I reread my own sentence and indeed – humans are made for the here and the now. For grief that is present now, not for the fear of loss that may come.  
Nothing has been irrevocably lost yet – all has just been set on hold. For a while. If ’a while’ is going to stretch out into ’a forever’ is yet to be discovered. But those mid-sea cannot long to see land, day after day after day after day – they would go insane.  
So, they bury their hopes for the land in some box in the attic of their minds and slip in the folds of the present-day – and surprisingly, those folds are warm and mostly comfortable. There is something extremely comforting about just sitting at one’s desk, holding a piece of silk in one hand, sewing what appear to be nonsense patterns with the other, while listening to an audiobook about a 11th-century French Christian woman from Viking descent who gave up everything to follow the love of her life, the son of a Jewish rabbi – and just being. With no purpose – or rather – existing within a purpose without knowing what the purpose is.

Yesterday I was angry and sad and joyful and liberated and despondent and over the moon and tearful. Tomorrow I will be angry and sad and joyful and liberated and despondent and over the moon and tearful.  
And so on, and so on and so on. What an intense, and in a sense priviliged way to live – to live life to the full, every single day. It is the reason I cannot, for the life of me, fear death anymore. Days seem to be weeks, weeks feel like months. I am ready to die every moment of my life, because death will, indeed, just be the next big adventure, in a life that is filled to the brim with adventure every day.  
I grieve more over those who might lose me over death than that I’m grieving the fact that I will die, for that I do not grieve at all. That being said – believing, fully believing, the first part of the previous sentence is still so hard – that I will be missed, truly missed, for who I was rather than for what I could – the idea is still, if I’m brutally honest, lying with most of its limbs in the domain of the unimaginable, the inconceivable.  
And for me, probably more than for anyone else on this planet right now, what I cannot imagine, what I cannot conceive of, is never going to happen. It is without a doubt the biggest limitation I’m experiencing at the moment, and by far the most dangerous. It is the one that needs to be removed if I am ever to do what I’m here to do.  
And so yes, inevitably, the verse that I hate most, hate with an unrivalled passion, not because it’s cruel or harmful or ugly or deceitful, but because it’s so true: ”And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”

I believe I will be helped, in some way, somehow. If not by the people or the circumstances I’m expecting right now, then by other people, other circumstances. They will provide. In some way, somehow.  
As of this moment, I am still dying, or so I’m told and I have no reason to question what I’m told. And I will continue to be dying until a decision has been made, and then I will be faced with a new choice and then again a decision needs to be made, this time by me. That decision will determine whether I continue to live or not – so, yes, I cannot die but because of old age or by my own hand.   
(How I wish I could’ve told him so earlier. How I wished he would’ve believed it straightaway, then that shorthand would never have had to be used and it would’ve saved him… – I don’t know what exactly – grief? Anger? Pain? Outrage? I can’t say. It would’ve saved him something unpleasant, that’s for sure.)

Had I but known what I was agreeing to when I said ’yes’ on 24th December! – it would be an easy thing to say. To suggest that I was lured into it somehow, betrayed, misguided, fooled, and that now I am a helpless, chained and detained creature, left to the mercy of some demonic force.  
The truth is – probably – that I instinctively knew very well what I was agreeing to, signing up for: to the life I need to live because it’s the only life in line with who I am. A seemingly chaotic, wild and untamed life; a tumultuous life; a hard life with some external friction and loads and loads of internal strife and conflict, that – most of the time – I will not be able to share with anyone; a wonderful life, where I give only to be given even more freely, in ways that I could not imagine; a life where I often might seem a leader, while those who know the innermost part of my heart and my soul would know that, instead, I am led all the time.   
A life of being led, led by my intuition, led by my heart, and always, invariably, led by some divine entity or another, whoever needs me most at that particular moment.  
Treasured by all in the realms above, belonging to none. The fate of the freelance prophet – and if that isn’t the sign of this being the 21st century.  
Though I have to say that I don’t really like the word ’prophet’. Call me ’a mediator’ or even better ’a go-between’ – because that is what I am. I stand in between and I make what is into what should be.  
In a museum of forgery (the metalworking process, not the other one), all kinds of items and tools are on display: hammers, anvils, tongs, the blacksmith’s apron. However, one element is absent: the most essential and at the same time the most ephemeral of them all, because it cannot be held, it cannot be contained. The fire.  
The fire that, in its essence, does not exist – only lives.  
It lives by transforming itself all the time, and in the process it is capable of transforming ’others’: material, people, situations. And whoever, in the process, might suffer from the heat of the fire by being scorched, the fire itself, inevitably, always suffers most, because it burns all the time. And that is the way it should be. Never must the fire suffer less than those it affects – if it does so, it’s a sign that it is standing outside of the process, rather than being part of it. The suffering isn’t always visible, often because it’s done beforehand – because by the time action has to be taken, the one who has to act cannot afford to waver, has to be strong at a time when others might feel vulnerable and confused by what is going on. But never believe for a moment that you, as the fire, can escape the suffering. You will weep at moments when others rejoice or are at rest, often in the confines of your own room. But you will never be alone – for those who make you do all of this, and how dreadful and horrible and soul-wrenching it sometimes feels, to the extent that it sometimes rips your soul apart, those who make you do this, will also be the ones who are there for you at those times – to hold and to comfort you. Because they care, and because you are dear to them. And while you give to them, or in their name, they give as well, to you, in an endless cycle that may and will be doubted and questioned often, not least by yourself, but that must never ever be broken.

In all of this I can only trust - trust that what is said to me is right, that the mistakes I am bound to make and for which I will take responsibility are also part of the process. To be a prophet or a mediator does not equal to be perfect. Far from it. This is not a perfect world. Even the gods are not perfect. In essence because perfection somehow cancels out life, and if the divine powers are one thing, it definitely is: full of life and supportive of life.  
Will I ever apologize for who I am, for what I am? In moments of weakness, yes, perhaps so. And when it is strategically opportune, to reach what has to be reached but what cannot be reached by any other means – yes, probably so. But I hope I will never do it with people I trust, for then I would be telling the greatest of lies, to them and to myself, to myself and to them.

I can only trust that that – committing to being a mad, uncompromising, but also naked and blundering and vulnerable dancer-poet who dances for all to see, through frost and heat and scorn and laughter – will indeed be of value to the world, will bring joy to the world and – hopefully, in the end, will bring the right people to me. Then, through all the sorrow, all the ecstacy, all the excitement and all the pain, I will have led a happy and a fulfilling life – the only life I could have led – and I will gladly fall into the arms of death when he decides to finally turn off the music, because it is time for the party to wrap up – and for the dancer to go home.

Machelen, 19 januari 2021


End file.
